Laboratories routinely stain tissue specimens for the purpose of detecting and/or monitoring tissue abnormalities. An automated tissue staining system allows batch staining of large numbers of tissue specimens for subsequent examination. Automation of the staining process significantly reduces the time required to stain tissue specimens, reduces the incidence of human error incipient in manual staining, and allows processing parameters to be altered in an efficient manner.
The staining process requires various types of reagents that are added to a slide carrying a tissue specimen. Reagents are an expensive expendable commodity. In a typical automated staining apparatus, the reagents are typically aspirated with a reagent probe from a reagent container and delivered to the tissue specimen on each slide. For accurate reagent dispensing, the reagent container contains an excess volume of reagent beyond a volume required for the staining process. The excess volume is required so that the reagent probe can aspirate the required volume from the reagent container. Conventional reagent containers are not configured to optimize the amount of reagent that the reagent probe successfully can withdraw and, thereby, to minimize the amount of reagent wasted.
A conventional automatic staining apparatus typically requires a set-up sequence to enter reagent parameters such as lot number, reagent identity, expiration date, reagent volume, reagent incompatibilities, and the like. Some reagent containers have a one-dimensional bar code that contains this or a subset of this reagent information. Reading the reagent information with a bar code reader and providing that information to the control system operating the staining apparatus reduces the time required to program a staining run. However, one-dimensional bar codes capable of holding a complete set of reagent parameters are too large to be placed on the reagent containers commonly used in automatic staining apparatus.
The automated staining apparatus has a processing space in which the environment is tightly controlled during the staining run. If additional slides are to be added to the pending slides in a staining run, the user must pause the staining run and breach the controlled environment of the processing space to add the new slides. The reagent containers are also positioned within the processing space. If new slides are added, the user must modify the types and/or quantities of reagents to satisfy the requirements of the global staining protocols of all slides by again breaching the processing space. Therefore, the lab technician compromises or otherwise disrupts the integrity of the controlled environment in the processing space when slides are added to a currently executing staining run.
During a staining run, the tissue specimens are exposed to a series of well-defined processing steps or a protocol that ultimately produces a properly stained specimen for examination. Conventionally, the automated staining apparatus may store the protocol or, in the alternative, may memorialize the protocol by a printed hard copy. Conventional automated staining devices cannot provide or export the protocol directly to a patient record database or laboratory information system so that, should a question arise regarding the protocol used to stain a specific tissue specimen, the complete association is readily available in a single database.